“Blacksmith” by C. Perricone

After William Bicknells’s The Blacksmith

William Harry Warren Bicknell , The Blacksmith, 1920, etching on paper

“It is devilishly difficult
To forge a figure.”
V. VanGogh

To forge a figure
You have to strike
The iron when it’s hot,
When the paint is bright,
The words right:
The ring ringing
Sparks flying,
When suddenly
It rains a hymn,
A golden go between
Embers and ash,
A voice between
Breath’s in and out.
Let the neighbors
Go to Hell and burn
For their own good,
Their sheets turn black
And stink on the line.
May the soot
Of the prehistoric dead
Pepper the sun,
The Voice… of Man
Smoking in a garage,
Bellowing like a stuck bull,
Burning His hands
And healing them
With the unguents
Of His sweat,
Cauterizing the wounds
We thought we never had.

C. Perricone has two volumes of poetry published: A Summer of Monkey Poems, Cummington Press, Omaha, 1996, and Footnotes, Boatwhistle Books, London, 2018. He was honored to have Playing Catch appear in All Along the Fence, Gibraltar Editions, 2014, a collection of poems celebrating the book arts publishing work of Harry Duncan. His poems have appeared in various literary magazines, both online and in print, and he has articles and reviews published in professional academic journals. He earned a PhD in philosophy from CUNY Graduate Center, New York, NY, and lives in NJ. He dedicates Blacksmith to Tony Cordasco – friend, blacksmith, craftsman, and caregiver.

Return to Journal of Ekphrastic Poetry main page.